• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

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1   BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA.

2   CHAPTER I.

3   The motives of the present work -- Reception of
4   the Author's first publication -- The discipline
5   of his taste at school -- The effect of contem-
6   porary writers on youthful minds -- Bowles's
7   sonnets -- Comparison between the Poets before
8   and since |Mr.| Pope.

¶1
9   IT has been my lot to have had my
10 name introduced both in conversation, and in
11 print, more frequently than I find it easy to
12 explain, whether I consider the fewness, unim-
13 portance, and limited circulation of my writings,
14 or the retirement and distance, in which I have
15 lived, both from the literary and political world.
16 Most often it has been connected with some
17 charge, which I could not acknowledge, or
18 some principle which I had never entertained.
19 Nevertheless, had I had no other motive, or
20 incitement, the reader would not have been

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21 troubled with this exculpation. What my ad-
22 ditional purposes were, will be seen in the fol-
23 lowing pages. It will be found, that the least
24 of what I have written concerns myself per-
25 sonally. I have used the narration chiefly for
26 the purpose of giving a continuity to the work,
27 in part for the sake of the miscellaneous reflec-
28 tions suggested to me by particular events, but
29 still more as introductory to the statement of
30 my principles in Politics, Religion, and Phi-
31 losophy, and the application of the rules, dedu-
32 ced from philosophical principles, to poetry and
33 criticism. But of the objects, which I proposed
34 to myself, it was not the least important to
35 effect, as far as possible, a settlement of the
36 long continued controversy concerning the true
37 nature of poetic diction: and at the same time
38 to define with the utmost impartiality the real
39 poetic character of the poet, by whose writings
40 this controversy was first kindled, and has been
41 since fuelled and fanned.

¶2
42 In 1794, when I had barely passed the verge
43 of manhood, I published a small volume of
44 juvenile poems. They were received with a
45 degree of favor, which, young as I was, I well
46 knew, was bestowed on them not so much for
47 any positive merit, as because they were consi-
48 dered buds of hope, and promises of better
49 works to come. The critics of that day, the
50 most flattering, equally with the severest, [[con-]]

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51 ||con||curred in objecting to them, obscurity, a general
52 turgidness of diction, and a profusion of new
53 coined double epithets.* The first is the fault
54 which a writer is the least able to detect in
55 his own compositions: and my mind was not
56 then sufficiently disciplined to receive the au-
57 thority of others, as a substitute for my own
58 conviction. Satisfied that the thoughts, such as
59 they were, could not have been expressed other-
60 wise, or at least more perspicuously, I forgot
61 to enquire, whether the thoughts themselves

* The authority of Milton and Shakspeare may be use-
fully pointed out to young authors. In the Comus, and earlier
Poems of Milton there is a superfluity of double epithets;
while in the Paradise Lost we find very few, in the Paradise
Regained scarce any. The same remark holds almost equally
true, of the Love's Labour Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Venus
and Adonis, and Lucrece compared with the Lear, Macbeth,
Othello, and Hamlet of our great Dramatist. The rule for
the admission of double epithets seems to be this: either
that they should be already denizens of our Language, such
as blood-stained, terror-stricken, self-applauding: or when
a new epithet, or one found in books only, is hazarded, that
it, at least, be one word, not two words made one by mere
virtue of the printer's hyphen. A language which, like the
English, is almost without cases, is indeed in its very genius
unfitted for compounds. If a writer, every time a com-
pounded word suggests itself to him, would seek for some
other mode of expressing the same sense, the chances are
always greatly in favor of his finding a better word. "Tan-
quam scopulum sic vites insolens verbum," is the wise advice
of Cæsar to the Roman Orators, and the precept applies
with double force to the writers in our own language. But
it must not be forgotten, that the same Cæesar wrote a gram-
matical treatise for the purpose of reforming the ordinary
language by bringing it to a greater accordance with the
principles of Logic or universal Grammar.

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62 did not demand a degree of attention unsuitable
63 to the nature and objects of poetry. This re-
64 mark however applies chiefly, though not ex-
65 clusively to the Religious Musings. The re-
66 mainder of the charge I admitted to its full
67 extent, and not without sincere acknowledg-
68 ments to both my private and public censors
69 for their friendly admonitions. In the after
70 editions, I pruned the double epithets with no
71 sparing hand, and used my best efforts to tame
72 the swell and glitter both of thought and dic-
73 tion; though in truth, these parasite plants of
74 youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into
75 my longer poems with such intricacy of union,
76 that I was often obliged to omit disentangling
77 the weed, from the fear of snapping the flower.
78 From that period to the date of the present
79 work I have published nothing, with my name,
80 which could by any possibility have come be-
81 fore the board of anonymous criticism. Even
82 the three or four poems, printed with the works
83 of a friend, as far as they were censured at all,
84 were charged with the same or similar defects,
85 though I am persuaded not with equal justice:
86 with an EXCESS OF ORNAMENT, in addition to
87 STRAINED AND ELABORATE DICTION. (Vide the
88 criticisms on the "Ancient Mariner," in the
89 Monthly and Critical Reviews of the first volume
90 of the Lyrical Ballads.) May I be permitted
91 to add, that, even at the early period of my [[ju-]]

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92 ||ju||venile poems, I saw and admitted the superior-
93 ity of an austerer, and more natural style, with
94 an insight not less clear, than I at present pos-
95 sess. My judgment was stronger, than were
96 my powers of realizing its dictates; and the
97 faults of my language, though indeed partly
98 owing to a wrong choice of subjects, and the
99 desire of giving a poetic colouring to abstract
100 and metaphysical truths in which a new world
101 then seemed to open upon me, did yet, in part
102 likewise, originate in unfeigned diffidence of my
103 own comparative talent.--During several years
104 of my youth and early manhood, I reverenced
105 those, who had re-introduced the manly sim-
106 plicity of the Grecian, and of our own elder
107 poets, with such enthusiasm, as made the hope
108 seem presumptuous of writing successfully in
109 the same style. Perhaps a similar process has
110 happened to others; but my earliest poems
111 were marked by an ease and simplicity, which
112 I have studied, perhaps with inferior success,
113 to impress on my later compositions.

¶3
114 At school I enjoyed the inestimable advan-
115 tage of a very sensible, though at the same
116 time, a very severe master. He* early moulded
117 my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to
118 Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil,

*The Rev. James Bowyer, many years Head Master of
the Grammar-School, Christ Hospital.

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119 and again of Virgil to Ovid. He habituated
120 me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts as
121 I then read) Terence, and above all the chaster
122 poems of Catullus, not only with the Roman
123 poets of the, so called, silver and brazen ages;
124 but with even those of the Augustan era: and
125 on grounds of plain sense and universal logic
126 to see and assert the superiority of the former, in
127 the truth and nativeness, both of their thoughts
128 and diction. At the same time that we were
129 studying the Greek Tragic Poets, he made us
130 read Shakspeare and Milton as lessons: and
131 they were the lessons too, which required most
132 time and trouble to bring up, so as to escape
133 his censure. I learnt from him, that Poetry,
134 even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of
135 the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as
136 severe as that of science; and more difficult,
137 because more subtle, more complex, and de-
138 pendent on more, and more fugitive causes.
139 In the truly great poets, he would say, there is
140 a reason assignable, not only for every word,
141 but for the position of every word; and I well
142 remember, that availing himself of the syno-
143 nimes to the Homer of Didymus, he made us
144 attempt to show, with regard to each, why it
145 would not have answered the same purpose;
146 and wherein consisted the peculiar fitness of
147 the word in the original text.

¶4
148 In our own English compositions (at least for

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149 the last three years of our school education)
150 he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or
151 image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where
152 the same sense might have been conveyed with
153 equal force and dignity in plainer words. Lute,
154 harp, and lyre, muse, muses, and inspirations,
155 Pegasus, Parnassus, and Hipocrene, were all
156 an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost
157 hear him now, exclaiming" Harp? Harp? Lyre?
158 Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse?
159 your Nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring?
160 Oh 'aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose!" Nay
161 certain introductions, similies, and examples,
162 were placed by name on a list of interdiction.
163 Among the similies, there was, I remember,
164 that of the Manchineel fruit, as suiting equally
165 well with too many subjects; in which how-
166 ever it yielded the palm at once to the example
167 of Alexander and Clytus, which was equally
168 good and apt, whatever might be the theme.
169 Was it ambition? Alexander and Clytus!--
170 Flattery? Alexander and Clytus!--Anger ?
171 Drunkenness? Pride? Friendship? Ingratitude?
172 Late repentance? Still, still Alexander and
173 Clytus! At length, the praises of agriculture
174 having been exemplified in the sagacious obser-
175 vation, that had Alexander been holding the
176 plough, he would not have run his friend Clytus
177 through with a spear, this tried, and serviceable
178 old friend was banished by public edict in [[se-]]

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179 ||se||cula seculorum. I have sometimes ventured to
180 think, that a list of this kind, or an index expur-
181 gatorius of certain well known and ever return-
182 ing phrases, both introductory, and transitional,
183 including the large assortment of modest ego-
184 tisms, and flattering illeisms, |&c.| |&c.| might be
185 hung up in our law-courts, and both houses of
186 parliament, with great advantage to the public,
187 as an important saving of national time, an in-
188 calculable relief to his Majesty's ministers, but
189 above all, as insuring the thanks of country
190 attornies, and their clients, who have private
191 bills to carry through the house.

¶5
192 Be this as it may, there was one custom of
193 our master's, which I cannot pass over in si-
194 lence, because I think it imitable and worthy
195 of imitation. He would often permit our theme
196 exercises, under some pretext of want of time,
197 to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to
198 be looked over. Then placing the whole num-
199 ber abreast on his desk, he would ask the
200 writer, why this or that sentence might not
201 have found as appropriate a place under this or
202 that other thesis: and if no satisfying answer
203 could be returned, and two faults of the same
204 kind were found in one exercise, the irrevocable
205 verdict followed, the exercise was torn up, and
206 another on the same subject to be produced,
207 in addition to the tasks of the day. The reader
208 will, I trust, excuse this tribute of recollection

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209 to a man, whose severities, even now, not sel-
210 dom furnish the dreams, by which the blind
211 fancy would fain interpret to the mind the pain-
212 ful sensations of distempered sleep; but neither
213 lessen nor dim the deep sense of my moral and
214 intellectual obligations. He sent us to the Uni-
215 versity excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and
216 tolerable Hebraists. Yet our classical know-
217 ledge was the least of the good gifts, which we
218 derived from his zealous and conscientious
219 tutorage. He is now gone to his final reward,
220 full of years, and full of honors, even of those
221 honors, which were dearest to his heart, as
222 gratefully bestowed by that school, and still
223 binding him to the interests of that school, in
224 which he had been himself educated, and to
225 which during his whole life he was a dedicated
226 thing.

¶6
227 From causes, which this is not the place to
228 investigate, no models of past times, however
229 perfect, can have the same vivid effect on the
230 youthful mind, as the productions of contem-
231 porary genius. The Discipline, my mind had
232 undergone, "Ne falleretur rotundo sono et ver-
233 suum cursu, cincinnis et floribus; sed ut inspi-
234 ceret quidnam subesset, quæ sedes, quod firma-
235 mentum, quis fundus verbis; an figuræ essent
236 mera ornatura et orationis fucus: vel sanguinis
237 e materiæ ipsius corde effluentis rubor quidam
238 nativus et incalescentia genuina;" removed all

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239 obstacles to the appreciation of excellence in
240 style without diminishing my delight. That
241 I was thus prepared for the perusal of |Mr.|
242 Bowles's sonnets and earlier poems, at once
243 increased their influence, and my enthusiasm.
244 The great works of past ages seem to a young
245 man things of another race, in respect to which
246 his faculties must remain passive and submiss,
247 even as to the stars and mountains. But the
248 writings of a contemporary, perhaps not many
249 years elder than himself, surrounded by the
250 same circumstances, and disciplined by the
251 same manners, possess a reality for him, and
252 inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a
253 man. His very admiration is the wind which
254 fans and feeds his hope. The poems themselves
255 assume the properties of flesh and blood. To
256 recite, to extol, to contend for them is but the
257 payment of a debt due to one, who exists to
258 receive it.

¶7
259 There are indeed modes of teaching which
260 have produced, and are producing, youths of
261 a very different stamp; modes of teaching, in
262 comparison with which we have been called
263 on to despise our great public schools, and
264 universities

265 "In whose halls are hung
266 Armoury of the invincible knights of old"--

267 modes, by which children are to be metamor-
268 phosed into prodigies. And prodigies with a

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269 vengeance have I known thus produced! Pro-
270 digies of self-conceit, shallowness, arrogance,
271 and infidelity! Instead of storing the memory,
272 during the period when the memory is the
273 predominant faculty, with facts for the after
274 exercise of the judgement; and instead of
275 awakening by the noblest models the fond and
276 unmixed LOVE and ADMIRATION, which is the
277 natural and graceful temper of early youth;
278 these nurselings of improved pedagogy are taught
279 to dispute and decide; to suspect all, but their
280 own and their lecturer's wisdom; and to hold
281 nothing sacred from their contempt, but their
282 own contemptible arrogance: boy-graduates in
283 all the technicals, and in all the dirty passions
284 and impudence, of anonymous criticism. To
285 such dispositions alone can the admonition of
286 Pliny be requisite, "Neque enim debet operi-
287 "bus ejus obesse, quod vivit. An si inter eos,
288 "quos nunquam vidimus, floruisset, non solum
289 "libros ejus, verum etiam imagines conquire-
290 "remus, ejusdem nunc honor præsentis, et gratia
291 "quasi satietate languescet? At hoc pravum,
292 "malignumque est, non admirari hominem admi-
293 "ratione dignissimum, quia videre, complecti,
294 "nec laudare tantum, verum etiam amare con-
295 "tingit." Plin. Epist. Lib. I.

¶8
296 I had just entered on my seventeenth year
297 when the sonnets of |Mr.| Bowles, twenty in
298 number, and just then published in a quarto

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299 pamphlet, were first made known and pre-
300 sented to me by a school-fellow who had
301 quitted us for the University, and who, during
302 the whole time that he was in our first form
303 (or in our school language a GRECIAN) had
304 been my patron and protector. I refer to |Dr.|
305 Middleton, the truly learned, and every way
306 excellent Bishop of Calcutta:

307 "Qui laudibus amplis
308 "Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat,
309 "Calcar agens animo validum. Non omnia terræ
310 "Obruta! Vivit amor, vivit dolor! Ora negatur
311 "Dulcia conspicere; at flere et meminisse* relictum est."
312 Petr. Ep. Lib. I. Ep. I.

¶9
313 It was a double pleasure to me, and still
314 remains a tender recollection, that I should
315 have received from a friend so revered the first
316 knowledge of a poet, by whose works, year
317 after year, I was so enthusiastically delighted
318 and inspired. My earliest acquaintances will
319 not have forgotten the undisciplined eagerness
320 and impetuous zeal, with which I laboured to
321 make proselytes, not only of my companions,
322 but of all with whom I conversed, of whatever
323 rank, and in whatever place. As my school

* I am most happy to have the necessity of informing the
reader, that since this passage was written, the report of
Middleton's death on his voyage to India has been proved
erroneous. He lives and long may he live; for I dare pro-
phecy, that with his life only will his exertions for the tem-
poral and spiritual welfare of his fellow men be limited.

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324 finances did not permit me to purchase copies,
325 I made, within less than a year, and an half,
326 more than forty transcriptions, as the best pre-
327 sents I could offer to those, who had in any
328 way won my regard. And with almost equal
329 delight did I receive the three or four following
330 publications of the same author.

¶10
331 Though I have seen and known enough of
332 mankind to be well aware, that I shall perhaps
333 stand alone in my creed, and that it will be
334 well, if I subject myself to no worse charge
335 than that of singularity; I am not therefore
336 deterred from avowing, that I regard, and ever
337 have regarded the obligations of intellect among
338 the most sacred of the claims of gratitude.
339 A valuable thought, or a particular train of
340 thoughts, gives me additional pleasure, when
341 I can safely refer and attribute it to the con-
342 versation or correspondence of another. My
343 obligations to |Mr.| Bowles were indeed import-
344 ant, and for radical good. At a very premature
345 age, even before my fifteenth year, I had be-
346 wildered myself in metaphysicks, and in theolo-
347 gical controversy. Nothing else pleased me.
348 History, and particular facts, lost all interest
349 in my mind. Poetry (though for a school-boy
350 of that age, I was above par in English versi-
351 fication, and had already produced two or three
352 compositions which, I may venture to say, with-
353 out reference to my age, were somewhat above

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354 mediocrity, and which had gained me more
355 credit, than the sound, good sense of my old
356 master was at all pleased with) poetry itself,
357 yea novels and romances, became insipid to
358 me. In my friendless wanderings on our leave-*
359 days, (for I was an orphan, and had scarce
360 any connections in London) highly was I de-
361 lighted, if any passenger, especially if he were
362 drest in black, would enter into conversation
363 with me. For I soon found the means of di-
364 recting it to my favorite subjects

365 Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate,
366 Fix'd fate, free will, fore-knowledge absolute,
367 And found no end in wandering mazes lost.

368 This preposterous pursuit was, beyond doubt,
369 injurious, both to my natural powers, and to
370 the progress of my education. It would per-
371 haps have been destructive, had it been con-
372 tinued; but from this I was auspiciously with-
373 drawn, partly indeed by an accidental intro-
374 duction to an amiable family, chiefly however,
375 by the genial influence of a style of poetry, so
376 tender, and yet so manly, so natural and real,
377 and yet so dignified, and harmonious, as the
378 sonnets, |&c.| of |Mr.| Bowles! Well were it for
379 me perhaps, had I never relapsed into the same

* The Christ Hospital phrase, not for holidays altogether,
but for those on which the boys are permitted to go beyond
the precincts of the school.

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380 mental disease; if I had continued to pluck
381 the flower and reap the harvest from the cul-
382 tivated surface, instead of delving in the un-
383 wholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic
384 depths. But if in after time I have sought a
385 refuge from bodily pain and mismanaged sen-
386 sibility in abstruse researches, which exercised
387 the strength and subtlety of the understanding
388 without awakening the feelings of the heart;
389 still there was a long and blessed interval, dur-
390 ing which my natural faculties were allowed
391 to expand, and my original tendencies to deve-
392 lope themselves: my fancy, and the love of
393 nature, and the sense of beauty in forms and
394 sounds.

¶11
395 The second advantage, which I owe to my
396 early perusal, and admiration of these poems
397 (to which let me add, though known to me
398 at a somewhat later period, the Lewsdon Hill
399 of |Mr.| CROW) bears more immediately on my
400 present subject. Among those with whom I
401 conversed, there were, of course, very many
402 who had formed their taste, and their notions
403 of poetry, from the writings of |Mr.| Pope and
404 his followers: or to speak more generally, in
405 that school of French poetry, condensed and
406 invigorated by English understanding, which
407 had predominated from the last century. I
408 was not blind to the merits of this school, yet
409 as from inexperience of the world, and [[conse-]]

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410 ||conse||quent want of sympathy with the general sub-
411 jects of these poems, they gave me little plea-
412 sure, I doubtless undervalued the kind, and
413 with the presumption of youth withheld from
414 its masters the legitimate name of poets. I
415 saw, that the excellence of this kind consisted
416 in just and acute observations on men and man-
417 ners in an artificial state of society, as its matter and
418 substance: and in the logic of wit, con-
419 veyed in smooth and strong epigramatic cou-
420 plets, as its form. Even when the subject was
421 addressed to the fancy, or the intellect, as in
422 the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on Man;
423 nay, when it was a consecutive narration, as in
424 that astonishing product of matchless talent
425 and ingenuity, Pope's Translation of the Iliad;
426 still a point was looked for at the end of each
427 second line, and the whole was as it were a
428 sorites, or, if I may exchange a logical for a
429 grammatical metaphor, a conjunction disjunc-
430 tive, of epigrams. Meantime the matter and
431 diction seemed to me characterized not so much
432 by poetic thoughts, as by thoughts translated
433 into the language of poetry. On this last point,
434 I had occasion to render my own thoughts
435 gradually more and more plain to myself, by
436 frequent amicable disputes concerning Darwin's
437 BOTANIC GARDEN, which, for some years, was
438 greatly extolled, not only by the reading public
439 in general, but even by those, whose genius

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440 and natural robustness of understanding ena-
441 bled them afterwards to act foremost in dis-
442 sipating these "painted mists" that occasionally
443 rise from the marshes at the foot of Parnassus.
444 During my first Cambridge vacation, I assisted
445 a friend in a contribution for a literary society
446 in Devonshire: and in this I remember to have
447 compared Darwin's work to the Russian pa-
448 lace of ice, glittering, cold and transitory. In
449 the same essay too, I assigned sundry reasons,
450 chiefly drawn from a comparison of passages in
451 the Latin poets with the original Greek, from
452 which they were borrowed, for the preference
453 of Collins's odes to those of Gray; and of the
454 simile in Shakspeare

455 " How like a younker or a prodigal,
456 "The skarfed bark puts from her native bay
457 "Hugg'd and embraced by the strumpet wind!
458 "How like a prodigal doth she return,
459 "With over-weather'd ribs and ragged sails,
460 "Lean, rent, and beggar'd by the strumpet wind!"

461 to the imitation in the bard;

462 "Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows
463 "While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
464 "In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,
465 "YOUTH at the prow and PLEASURE at the helm,
466 "Regardless of the sweeping whirlwinds sway,
467 "That hush'd in grim repose, expects it's evening prey."

468 (In which, by the bye, the words "realm" and
469 " sway" are rhymes dearly purchased.) I pre-
470 ferred the original on the ground, that in the

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471 imitation it depended wholly in the composi-
472 tor's putting, or not putting a small Capital,
473 both in this, and in many other passages of the
474 same poet, whether the words should be person-
475 ifications, or mere abstracts. I mention this,
476 because in referring various lines in Gray to
477 their original in Shakspeare and Milton; and in
478 the clear perception how completely all the
479 propriety was lost in the transfer; I was, at
480 that early period, led to a conjecture, which,
481 many years afterwards was recalled to me from
482 the same thought having been started in con-
483 versation, but far more ably, and developed
484 more fully, by |Mr.| WORDSWORTH; namely, that
485 this style of poetry, which I have characterised
486 above, as translations of prose thoughts into
487 poetic language, had been kept up by, if it did
488 not wholly arise from, the custom of writing
489 Latin verses, and the great importance at-
490 tached to these exercises, in our public schools.
491 Whatever might have been the case in the fif-
492 teenth century, when the use of the Latin
493 tongue was so general among learned men, that
494 Erasmus is said to have forgotten his native
495 language; yet in the present day it is not to be
496 supposed, that a youth can think in Latin, or
497 that he can have any other reliance on the force
498 or fitness of his phrases, but the authority of
499 the author from whence he has adopted them.
500 Consequently he must first prepare his thoughts,

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501 and then pick out, from Virgil, Horace, Ovid, or
502 perhaps more compendiously from his* Gradus,
503 halves and quarters of lines, in which to embody
504 them.

¶12
505 I never object to a certain degree of disputa-
506 tiousness in a young man from the age of seven-
507 teen to that of four or five and twenty, provided
508 I find him always arguing on one side of the
509 question. The controversies, occasioned by my
510 unfeigned zeal for the honor of a favorite con-
511 temporary, then known to me only by his works,
512 were of great advantage in the formation and
513 establishment of my taste and critical opinions.
514 In my defence of the lines running into each
515 other, instead of closing at each couplet; and
516 of natural language, neither bookish, nor vulgar,
517 neither redolent of the lamp, or of the kennel,
518 such as I will remember thee; instead of the
519 same thought tricked up in the rag-fair finery of,

520 ----Thy image on her wing
521 Before my FANCY'S eye shall MEMORY bring,

522 I had continually to adduce the metre and

* In the Nutricia of Politian there occurs this line:

" Pura coloratos interstrepit unda lapillos."
Casting my eye on a University prize-poem, I met this line,
" Lactea purpureos interstrepit unda lapillos."
Now look out in the Gradus for Purus, and you find as
the first synonime, lacteus; for coloratus and the first sy-
nonime is purpureus. I mention this by way of elucidating
one of the most ordinary processes in the ferrumination of
these centos.

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523 diction of the Greek Poets from Homer to
524 Theocritus inclusive; and still more of our
525 elder English poets from Chaucer to Milton.
526 Nor was this all. But as it was my constant
527 reply to authorities brought against me from
528 later poets of great name, that no authority
529 could avail in opposition to TRUTH, NATURE,
530 LOGIC, and the LAWS of UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR;
531 actuated too by my former passion for meta-
532 physical investigations; I labored at a solid
533 foundation, on which permanently to ground
534 my opinions, in the component faculties of the
535 human mind itself, and their comparative dig-
536 nity and importance. According to the faculty
537 or source, from which the pleasure given by
538 any poem or passage was derived, I estimated
539 the merit of such poem or passage. As the
540 result of all my reading and meditation, I ab-
541 stracted two critical aphorisms, deeming them
542 to comprize the conditions and criteria of poetic
543 style; first, that not the poem which we have
544 read, but that to which we return, with the
545 greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power,
546 and claims the name of essential poetry. Second,
547 that whatever lines can be translated into other
548 words of the same language, without dimi-
549 nution of their significance, either in sense,
550 or association, or in any worthy feeling, are
551 so far vicious in their diction. Be it however
552 observed, that I excluded from the list of [[wor-]]

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553 ||wor||thy feelings, the pleasure derived from mere
554 novelty, in the reader, and the desire of ex-
555 citing wonderment at his powers in the author.
556 Oftentimes since then, in perusing French tra-
557 gedies, I have fancied two marks of admiration
558 at the end of each line, as hieroglyphics of the
559 author's own admiration at his own cleverness.
560 Our genuine admiration of a great poet is a
561 continuous under-current of feeling; it is every
562 where present, but seldom any where as a se-
563 parate excitement. I was wont boldly to affirm,
564 that it would be scarcely more difficult to push
565 a stone out from the pyramids with the bare
566 hand, than to alter a word, or the position of a
567 word, in Milton or Shakspeare, (in their most
568 important works at least) without making the
569 author say something else, or something worse,
570 than he does say. One great distinction, I
571 appeared to myself to see plainly, between, even
572 the characteristic faults of our elder poets, and
573 the false beauty of the moderns. In the former, from
574 DONNE to COWLEY, we find the most fan-
575 tastic out-of-the-way thoughts, but in the most
576 pure and genuine mother English; in the latter,
577 the most obvious thoughts, in language the
578 most fantastic and arbitrary. Our faulty elder
579 poets sacrificed the passion, and passionate
580 flow of poetry, to the subtleties of intellect, and
581 to the starts of wit; the moderns to the glare
582 and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and [[hete-]]

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583 ||hete||rogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious
584 something, made up, half of image, and half of
585 abstract* meaning. The one sacrificed the heart
586 to the head; the other both heart and head to
587 point and drapery.

¶13
588 The reader must make himself acquainted
589 with the general style of composition that was
590 at that time deemed poetry, in order to under-
591 stand and account for the effect produced on
592 me by the SONNETS, the MONODY at MATLOCK,
593 and the HOPE, of |Mr.| Bowles; for it is pecu-
594 liar to original genius to become less and less
595 striking, in proportion to its success in improv-
596 ing the taste and judgement of its contempora-
597 ries. The poems of WEST indeed had the
598 merit of chaste and manly diction, but they
599 were cold, and, if I may so express it, only
600 dead-coloured; while in the best of Warton's
601 there is a stiffness, which too often gives them
602 the appearance of imitations from the Greek.
603 Whatever relation therefore of cause or impulse
604 Percy's collection of Ballads may bear to the
605 most popular poems of the present day; yet in
606 the more sustained and elevated style, of the

* I remember a ludicrous instance in the poem of a young
tradesman:

" No more will I endure love's pleasing pain,
Or round my heart's leg tie his galling chain."

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607 then living poets Bowles and Cowper* were, to
608 the best of my knowledge, the first who com-
609 bined natural thoughts with natural diction;
610 the first who reconciled the heart with the head.

¶14
611 It is true, as I have before mentioned, that
612 from diffidence in my own powers, I for a short
613 time adopted a laborious and florid diction,
614 which I myself deemed, if not absolutely vici-
615 ous, yet of very inferior worth. Gradually,
616 however, my practice conformed to my better
617 judgement; and the compositions of my twenty-
618 fourth and twenty-fifth year (ex. gr. the shorter
619 blank verse poems, the lines which are now
620 adopted in the introductory part of the VISION
621 in the present collection in |Mr.| Southey's Joan
622 of Arc, 2nd book, 1st edition, and the Tragedy
623 of REMORSE) are not more below my present
624 ideal in respect of the general tissue of the style,
625 than those of the latest date. Their faults were

* Cowper's task was published some time before the son-
nets of |Mr.| Bowles; but I was not familiar with it till many
years afterwards. The vein of Satire which runs through
that excellent poem, together with the sombre hue of its re-
ligious opinions, would probably, at that time, have pre-
vented its laying any strong hold on my affections. The
love of nature seems to have led Thompson to a chearful re-
ligion; and a gloomy religion to have led Cowper to a love
of nature. The one would carry his fellow-men along with
him into nature; the other flies to nature from his fellow-
men. In chastity of diction however, and the harmony of
blank verse, Cowper leaves Thompson unmeasureably below
him; yet still I feel the latter to have been the born poet.

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626 at least a remnant of the former leaven, and
627 among the many who have done me the honor
628 of putting my poems in the same class with
629 those of my betters, the one or two, who have
630 pretended to bring examples of affected sim-
631 plicity from my volume, have been able to ad-
632 duce but one instance, and that out of a copy
633 of verses half ludicrous, half splenetic, which
634 I intended, and had myself characterized, as
635 sermoni propriora.

¶15
636 Every reform, however necessary, will by
637 weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself
638 will need reforming. The reader will excuse
639 me for noticing, that I myself was the {fi}rst to
640 expose risu honesto the three sins of poetry, one
641 or the other of which is the most likely to beset
642 a young writer. So long ago as the publica-
643 tion of the second number of the monthly ma-
644 gazine, under the name of NEHEMIAH HIGGEN-
645 BOTTOM I contributed three sonnets, the first of
646 which had for its object to excite a good-natur-
647 ed laugh at the spirit of doleful egotism, and at
648 the recurrence of favorite phrases, with the
649 double defect of being at once trite, and licen-
650 tious. The second, on low, creeping language
651 and thoughts, under the pretence of simplicity.
652 And the third, the phrases of which were bor-
653 rowed entirely from my own poems, on the
654 indiscriminate use of elaborate and swelling

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655 language and imagery. The reader will find
656 them in the note* below, and will I trust regard
657 them as reprinted for biographical purposes,
658 and not for their poetic merits. So general at

SONNET 1.

* PENSIVE at eve, on the hard world I mused,
And my poor heart was sad; so at the MOON
I gazed, and sighed, and sighed; for ah how soon
Eve saddens into night! mine eyes perused
With tearful vacancy the dampy grass
That wept and glitter'd in the paly ray:
And I did pause me, on my lonely way
And mused me, on the wretched ones that pass
O'er the bleak heath of sorrow. But alas!
Most of myself I thought! when it befel,
That the soothe spirit of the breezy wood
Breath'd in mine ear: "All this is very well
But much of ONE thing, is for NO thing good."
Oh my poor heart's INEXPLICABLE SWELL!

SONNET II.

OH I do love thee, meek SIMPLICITY!
For of thy lays the lulling simpleness
Goes to my heart, and soothes each small distress,
Distress tho' small, yet haply great to me,
'Tis true on Lady Fortune's gentlest pad
I amble on; and yet I know not why
So sad I am! but should a friend and I
Frown, pout and part, then I am very sad.
And then with sonnets and with sympathy
My dreamy bosom's mystic woes I pall;
Now of my false friend plaining plaintively,
Now raving at mankind in general;
But whether sad or fierce, 'tis simple all,
All very simple, meek SIMPLICITY!

SONNET III.

AND this reft house is that, the which he built,
Lamented Jack! and here his malt he pil'd,
Cautious in vain! these rats, that squeak so wild,
Squeak not unconscious of their father's guilt.
Did he not see her gleaming thro' the glade!
Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn.
What tho' she milk no cow with crumpled horn,
Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd:*

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659 that time, and so decided was the opinion con-
660 cerning the characteristic vices of my style, that
661 a celebrated physician (now, alas! no more)
662 speaking of me in other respects with his usual
663 kindness to a gentleman, who was about to
664 meet me at a dinner party, could not however
665 resist giving him a hint not to mention the
666 " House that Jack built" in my presence, for
667 " that I was as sore as a boil about that sonnet ;"
668 he not knowing, that I was myself the author
669 of it.

*
And aye, beside her stalks her amarous knight!
Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,
And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn,
His hindward charms glean an unearthly white.
Ah! thus thro' broken clouds at night's high Noon
Peeps in fair fragments forth the full-orb'd harvest-moon!

The following anecdote will not be wholly out of place
here, and may perhaps amuse the reader. An amateur per-
former in verse expressed to a common friend, a strong de-
sire to be introduced to me, but hesitated in accepting my
friend's immediate offer, on the score that "he was, he must
acknowledge the author of a confounded severe epigram on
my ancient mariner, which had given me great pain. I as-
sured my friend that if the epigram was a good one, it would
only increase my desire to become acquainted with the au-
thor, and begg'd to hear it recited: when, to my no less
surprise than amusement, it proved to be one which I had
myself some time before written and inserted in the Morning
Post.

To the author of the Ancient Mariner.

Your poem must eternal be,
Dear-sir! it cannot fail,
For 'tis incomprehensible
And without head or tail.

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670 CHAPTER II.

671 Supposed irritability of men of Genius -- Brought
672 to the test of Facts -- Causes and Occasions of
673 the charge -- Its Injustice.

¶16
674 I have often thought, that it would be neither
675 uninstructive nor unamusing to analyze, and
676 bring forward into distinct consciousness, that
677 complex feeling, with which readers in general
678 take part against the author, in favor of the
679 critic; and the readiness with which they apply
680 to all poets the old sarcasm of Horace upon
681 the scriblers of his time: "Genus irritabile
682 vatum." A debility and dimness of the imagi-
683 native power, and a consequent necessity of
684 reliance on the immediate impressions of the
685 senses, do, we well know, render the mind
686 liable to superstition and fanaticism. Having a
687 deficient portion of internal and proper warmth,
688 minds of this class seek in the crowd circum
689 fana for a warmth in common, which they do
690 not possess singly. Cold and phlegmatic in their
691 own nature, like damp hay, they heat and in-
692 flame by co-acervation; or like bees they be-
693 come restless and irritable through the increased
694 temperature of collected multitudes. Hence

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695 the German word for fanaticism (such at least
696 was its original import) is derived from the
697 swarming of bees, namely, Schwärmen, Sch-
698 wärmerey. The passion being in an inverse
699 proportion to the insight, that the more vivid,
700 as this the less distinct; anger is the inevitable
701 consequence. The absence of all foundation
702 within their own minds for that, which they yet
703 believe both true and indispensible for their
704 safety and happiness, cannot but produce an
705 uneasy state of feeling, an involuntary sense of
706 fear from which nature has no means of res-
707 cuing herself but by anger. Experience informs
708 us that the first defence of weak minds is to
709 recriminate.

710 " There's no Philosopher but sees,
711 That rage and fear are one disease,
712 Tho' that may burn, and this may freeze,
713 They're both alike the ague."
714 MAD OX.

715 But where the ideas are vivid, and there exists
716 an endless power of combining and modifying
717 them, the feelings and affections blend more
718 easily and intimately with these ideal creations,
719 than with the objects of the senses; the mind
720 is affected by thoughts, rather than by things;
721 and only then feels the requisite interest even
722 for the most important events, and accidents,
723 when by means of meditation they have passed
724 into thoughts. The sanity of the mind is be-
725 tween superstition with fanaticism on the one

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726 hand; and enthusiasm with indifference and a
727 diseased slowness to action on the other. For
728 the conceptions of the mind may be so vivid
729 and adequate, as to preclude that impulse to
730 the realizing of them, which is strongest and
731 most restless in those, who possess more than
732 mere talent (or the faculty of appropriating
733 and applying the knowledge of others) yet
734 still want something of the creative, and self-
735 sufficing power of absolute Genius. For this
736 reason therefore, they are men of commanding
737 genius. While the former rest content between
738 thought and reality, as it were in an intermun-
739 dium of which their own living spirit supplies
740 the substance, and their imagination the ever-
741 varying form; the latter must impress their
742 preconceptions on the world without, in order
743 to present them back to their own view with
744 the satisfying degree of clearness, distinctness,
745 and individuality. These in tranquil times are
746 formed to exhibit a perfect poem in palace or
747 temple or landscape-garden; or a tale of ro-
748 mance in canals that join sea with sea, or in walls
749 of rock, which shouldering back the billows
750 imitate the power, and supply the benevolence
751 of nature to sheltered navies; or in aqueducts
752 that arching the wide vale from mountain to
753 mountain give a Palmyra to the desert. But
754 alas! in times of tumult they are the men des-
755 tined to come forth as the shaping spirit of Ruin.

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756 to destroy the wisdom of ages in order to
757 substitute the fancies of a day, and to change
758 kings and kingdoms, as the wind shifts and
759 shapes the clouds.† The records of biography
760 seem to confirm this theory. The men of the
761 greatest genius, as far as we can judge from
762 their own works or from the accounts of their
763 contemporaries, appear to have been of calm
764 and tranquil temper, in all that related to them-
765 selves. In the inward assurance of permanent
766 fame, they seem to have been either indifferent
767 or resigned, with regard to immediate reputa-
768 tion. Through all the works of Chaucer there
769 reigns a chearfulness, a manly hilarity, which
770 makes it almost impossible to doubt a corres-
771 pondent habit of feeling in the author himself.
772 Shakspeare's evenness and sweetness of temper
773 were almost proverbial in his own age. That
774 this did not arise from ignorance of his own
775 comparative greatness, we have abundant proof
776 in his sonnets, which could scarcely have been

† "Of old things all are over old,
Of good things none are good enough:--
We'll show that we can help to frame
A world of other stuff.

I too will have my kings, that take
From me the sign of life and death:
Kingdoms shall shift about, like clouds,
Obedient to my breath."

WORDSWORTH'S ROB ROY.

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777 known to |Mr.| Pope,* when he asserted, that
778 our great bard "grew immortal in his own
779 "despite." Speaking, of one whom he had cele-
780 brated, and contrasting the duration of his
781 works with that of his personal existence,
782 Shakspeare adds:

783 " Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
784 Tho' I once gone to all the world must die;
785 The earth can yield me but a common grave,
786 When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
787 Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
788 Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read;
789 And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,
790 When all the breathers of this world are dead:
791 You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,
792 Where breath most breathes, e'en in the mouth of men."

793 SONNET 81st.

794 I have taken the first that occurred; but Shaks-
795 peare's readiness to praise his rivals, ore pleno,
796 and the confidence of his own equality with

* |Mr.| Pope was under the common error of his age, an
error, far from being sufficiently exploded even at the pre-
sent day. It consists (as I explained at large, and proved in
detail in my public lectures) in mistaking for the essentials of
the Greek stage certain rules, which the wise poets imposed
upon themselves, in order to render all the remaining parts
of the drama consistent with those, that had been forced
upon them by circumstances independent of their will; out
of which circumstances the drama itself arose. The cir-
cumstances in the time of Shakspeare, which it was equally
out of his power to alter, were different, and such as, in my
opinion, allowed a far wider sphere, and a deeper and more
human interest. Critics are too apt to forget, that rules are
but means to an end; consequently where the ends are [[dif-]]*

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797 those whom he deem'd most worthy of his
798 praise, are alike manifested in the 86th sonnet.

799 " Was it the proud full sail of his great verse
800 Bound for the praise of all-too-precious you,
801 That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
802 Making their tomb, the womb wherein they grew ?
803 Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
804 Above a mortal pitch that struck me dead?
805 No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
806 Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
807 He, nor that affable familiar ghost,
808 Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
809 As victors of my silence cannot boast;
810 I was not sick of any fear from thence!
811 But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
812 Then lack'd I matter, that enfeebled mine.

¶17
813 In Spencer indeed, we trace a mind consti-
814 tutionally tender, delicate, and, in comparison
815 with his three great compeers, I had almost
816 said, effeminate; and this additionally sad-
817 dened by the unjust persecution of Burleigh,

*||dif||ferent, the rules must he likewise so. We must have ascer-
tained what the end is, before we can determine what the
rules ought to be. Judging under this impression, I did not
hesitate to declare my full conviction, that the consummate
judgement of Shakspeare, not only in the general construc-
tion, but in all the detail, of his dramas impressed me with
greater wonder, than even the might of his genius, or the
depth of his philosophy. The substance of these lectures I
hope soon to publish ; and it is but a debt of justice to my-
self and my friends to notice, that the first course of lectures,
which differed from the following courses only, by occa-
sionally varying the illustrations of the same thoughts, was
addressed to very numerous, and I need not add, respect-
able audiences at the royal institution, before |Mr.| Schlegel
gave his lectures on the same subjects at Vienna.

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818 and the severe calamities, which overwhelmed
819 his latter days. These causes have diffused
820 over all his compositions "a melancholy grace,"
821 and have drawn forth occasional strains, the
822 more pathetic from their gentleness. But no
823 where do we find the least trace of irritability,
824 and still less of quarrelsome or affected con-
825 tempt of his censurers.

¶18
826 The same calmness, and even greater self-
827 possession, may be affirmed of Milton, as far
828 as his poems, and poetic character are con-
829 cerned. He reserved his anger, for the enemies
830 of religion, freedom, and his country. My
831 mind is not capable of forming a more august
832 conception, than arises from the contempla-
833 tion of this great man in his latter days: poor,
834 sick, old, blind, slandered, persecuted,

835 " Darkness before, and danger's voice behind,"

836 in an age in which he was as little understood
837 by the party, for whom, as by that, against
838 whom he had contended; and among men be-
839 fore whom he strode so far as to dwarf him-
840 self by the distance; yet still listening to the
841 music of his own thoughts, or if additionally
842 cheered, yet cheered only by the prophetic
843 faith of two or three solitary individuals, he did
844 nevertheless

845 --" Argue not
846 Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
847 Of heart or hope; but still bore up and steer'd
848 Right onward."

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849 From others only do we derive our knowledge
850 that Milton, in his latter day, had his scorners
851 and detractors; and even in his day of youth
852 and hope, that he had enemies would have been
853 unknown to us, had they not been likewise the
854 enemies of his country.

¶19
855 I am well aware, that in advanced stages of
856 literature, when there exist many and excellent
857 models, a high degree of talent, combined with
858 taste and judgement, and employed in works
859 of imagination, will acquire for a man the name
860 of a great genius; though even that analogon of
861 genius, which, in certain states of society, may
862 even render his writings more popular than the
863 absolute reality could have done, would be
864 sought for in vain in the mind and temper of the
865 author himself. Yet even in instances of this
866 kind, a close examination will often detect, that
867 the irritability, which has been attributed to the
868 author's genius as its cause, did really originate
869 in an ill conformation of body, obtuse pain, or
870 constitutional defect of pleasurable sensation.
871 What is charged to the author, belongs to the
872 man, who would probably have been still more
873 impatient, but for the humanizing influences of
874 the very pursuit, which yet bears the blame of
875 his irritability.

¶20
876 How then are we to explain the easy cre-
877 dence generally given to this charge, if the
878 charge itself be not, as we have endeavoured to

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879 show, supported by experience? This seems
880 to me of no very difficult solution. In what-
881 ever country literature is widely diffused, there
882 will be many who mistake an intense desire to
883 possess the reputation of poetic genius, for the
884 actual powers, and original tendencies which
885 constitute it. But men, whose dearest wishes
886 are fixed on objects wholly out of their own
887 power, become in all cases more or less impa-
888 tient and prone to anger. Besides, though it
889 may be paradoxical to assert, that a man can
890 know one thing, and believe the opposite, yet
891 assuredly, a vain person may have so habitu-
892 ally indulged the wish, and persevered in the
893 attempt to appear, what he is not, as to become
894 himself one of his own proselytes. Still, as this
895 counterfeit and artificial persuasion must differ,
896 even in the person's own feelings, from a real
897 sense of inward power, what can be more na-
898 tural, than that this difference should betray
899 itself in suspicious and jealous irritability ?
900 Even as the flowery sod, which covers a hol-
901 low, may be often detected by its shaking and
902 trembling.

¶21
903 But, alas! the multitude of books, and the
904 general diffusion of literature, have produced
905 other, and more lamentable effects in the world
906 of letters, and such as are abundant to explain,
907 tho' by no means to justify, the contempt with
908 which the best grounded complaints of injured

{{Page 38}}

909 genius are rejected as frivolous, or entertained
910 as matter of merriment. In the days of Chaucer
911 and Gower, our language might (with due al-
912 lowance for the imperfections of a simile) be
913 compared to a wilderness of vocal reeds, from
914 which the favorites only of Pan or Apollo
915 could construct even the rude Syrinx; and
916 from this the constructors alone could elicit
917 strains of music. But now, partly by the la-
918 bours of successive poets, and in part by the
919 more artificial state of society and social inter-
920 course, language, mechanized as it were into a
921 barrel-organ, supplies at once both instrument
922 and tune. Thus even the deaf may play, so as
923 to delight the many. Sometimes (for it is with
924 similies, as it is with jests at a wine table, one
925 is sure to suggest another) I have attempted to
926 illustrate the present state of our language, in
927 its relation to literature, by a press-room of
928 larger and smaller stereotype pieces, which,
929 in the present anglo-gallican fashion of uncon-
930 nected, epigrammatic periods, it requires but
931 an ordinary portion of ingenuity to vary inde-
932 finitely, and yet still produce something, which,
933 if not sense, will be so like it, as to do as well.
934 Perhaps better: for it spares the reader the
935 trouble of thinking; prevents vacancy, while it
936 indulges indolence; and secures the memory
937 from all danger of an intellectual plethora.
938 Hence of all trades, literature at present [[de-]]

{{Page 39}}

939 ||de||mands the least talent or information; and, of
940 all modes of literature, the manufacturing of
941 poems. The difference indeed between these
942 and the works of genius, is not less than be-
943 tween an egg, and an egg-shell; yet at a distance
944 they both look alike. Now it is no less re-
945 markable than true, with how little examina-
946 tion works of polite literature are commonly
947 perused, not only by the mass of readers, but
948 by men of first rate ability, till some accident
949 or chance* discussion have roused their atten-

* In the course of my lectures, I had occasion to point out
the almost faultless position and choice of words, in |Mr.|
Pope's original compositions, particularly in his satires and
moral essays, for the purpose of comparing them with his
translation of Homer, which, I do not stand alone in re-
garding as the main source of our pseudo-poetic diction.
And this, by the bye, is an additional confirmation of a re-
mark made, I believe, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, that next to
the man who formed and elevated the taste of the public, he
that corrupted it, is commonly the greatest genius. Among
other passages, I analyzed sentence by sentence, and almost
word by word, the popular lines,

" As when the moon, resplendent lamp of light," |&c.|

much in the same way as has been since done, in an excellent
article on Chalmers's British Poets in the Quarterly Review.
The impression on the audience in general was sudden and
evident: and a number of enlightened and highly educated
individuals, who at different times afterwards addressed me
on the subject, expressed their wonder, that truth so ob-
vious should not have struck them before; but at the same
time acknowledged (so much had they been accustomed, in
reading poetry, to receive pleasure from the separate images
and phrases successively, without asking themselves whether
the collective meaning was sense or nonsense) that they might
in all probability have read the same passage again twenty*

{{Page 40}}

950 tion, and put them on their guard. And hence
951 individuals below mediocrity not less in natural
952 power than in acquired knowledge; nay, bung-
953 lers that had failed in the lowest mechanic
954 crafts, and whose presumption is in due pro-
955 portion to their want of sense and sensibility;
956 men, who being first scriblers from idleness and
957 ignorance next become libellers from envy and
958 malevolence; have been able to drive a suc-
959 cessful trade in the employment of the book-
960 sellers, nay have raised themselves into tempo-
961 rary name and reputation with the public at
962 large, by that most powerful of all adulation,

times with undiminished admiration, and without once re-
flecting, that "asra thaein{ee}n amphi sel{ee}n{ee}n phainet ariprepea"
(i. e. the stars around, or near the full moon, shine pre-
eminently bright) conveys a just and happy image of a moon-
light sky: while it is difficult to determine whether in the
lines,

"Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole,"

the sense, or the diction be the more absurd. My answer
was; that tho' I had derived peculiar advantages from my
school discipline, and tho' my general theory of poetry was
the same then as now, I had yet experienced the same sen-
sations myself, and felt almost as if I had been newly
couched, when by |Mr.| Wordsworth's conversation, I had
been induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Grey's
celebrated elegy. I had long before detected the defects in
" the Bard ;" but "the Elegy" I had considered as proof
against all fair attacks; and to this day I cannot read either,
without delight, and a portion of enthusiasm. At all events,
whatever pleasure I may have lost by the clearer perception
of the faults in certain passages, has been more than repaid
to me, by the additional delight with which I read the
remainder.

{{Page 41}}

963 the appeal to the bad and malignant passions
964 of mankind.*But as it is the nature of scorn,
965 envy, and all malignant propensities to require
966 a quick change of objects, such writers are
967 sure, sooner or later to awake from their dream
968 of vanity to disappointment and neglect with
969 embittered and envenomed feelings. Even [[du-]]

* Especially "in this AGE OF PERSONALITY, this age of
literary and political GOSSIPING, when the meanest insects
are worshipped with a sort of Egyptian superstition, if only
the brainless head be atoned for by the sting of personal
malignity in the tail! When the most vapid satires have be-
come the objects of a keen public interest, purely from the
number of contemporary characters named in the patch-
work notes (which possess, however, the comparative merit of
being more poetical than the text) and because, to increase
the stimulus, the author has sagaciously left his own name
for whispers and conjectures! In an age, when even ser-
mons are published with a double appendix stuffed with
names--in a generation so transformed from the characteris-
tic reserve of Britons, that from the ephemeral sheet of a
London newspaper, to the everlasting Scotch Professorial
Quarto, almost every publication exhibits or flatters the
epidemic distemper; that the very "last year's rebuses" in
the Ladies Diary, are answered in a serious elegy " on my
father's death" with the name and habitat of the elegiac
Œdipus subscribed; and " other ingenious solutions were
likewise given" to the said rebuses--not as heretofore by
Crito, Philander, A, B, Y, |&c.| but by fifty or sixty plain
English sirnames at full length with their several places of
abode! In an age, when a bashful Philalethes, or Phileleu-
theros is as rare on the title-pages, and among the signatures
of our magazines, as a real name used to be in the days of
our shy and notice-shunning grandfathers! When (more
exquisite than all) I see an EPIC POEM (spirits of Maro and
Mæonides make ready to welcome your new compeer!)
advertised with the special recommendation, that the said
EPIC POEM contains more than an hundred names of living persons."
FRIEND No. 10.

{{Page 42}}

970 ||du||ring their short-lived success, sensible in
971 spite of themselves on what a shifting foundation it
972 rested, they resent the mere refusal of praise,
973 as a robbery, and at the justest censures kindle
974 at once into violent and undisciplined abuse;
975 till the acute disease changing into chronical,
976 the more deadly as the less violent, they be-
977 come the fit instruments of literary detraction,
978 and moral slander. They are then no longer to
979 be questioned without exposing the complain-
980 ant to ridicule, because, forsooth, they are ano-
981 nymous critics, and authorised as "synodical
982 individuals"* to speak of themselves plurali
983 majestatico! As if literature formed a cast, like
984 that of the PARAS in Hindostan, who, however
985 maltreated, must not dare to deem themselves
986 wronged! As if that, which in all other cases
987 adds a deeper die to slander, the circumstance
988 of its being anonymous, here acted only to
989 make the slanderer inviolable! Thus, in part,
990 from the accidental tempers of individuals (men
991 of undoubted talent, but not men of genius)
992 tempers rendered yet more irritable by their
993 desire to appear men of genius; but still more
994 effectively by the excesses of the mere counter-
995 feits both of talent and genius; the number
996 too being so incomparably greater of those who
997 are thought to be, than of those who really are

* A phrase of Andrew Marvel's.

{{Page 43}}

998 men of real genius; and in part from the natu-
999 ral, but not therefore the less partial and unjust
1000 distinction, made by the public itself between
1001 literary, and all other property; I believe the
1002 prejudice to have arisen, which considers an
1003 unusual irascibility concerning the reception of
1004 its products as characteristic of genius. It
1005 might correct the moral feelings of a numerous
1006 class of readers, to suppose a Review set on
1007 foot, the object of which was to criticise all the
1008 chief works presented to the public by our rib-
1009 bon-weavers, calico-printers, cabinet-makers,
1010 and china-manufacturers; a Review conducted
1011 in the same spirit, and which should take the
1012 same freedom with personal character, as our
1013 literary journals. They would scarcely, I think,
1014 deny their belief, not only that the "genus
1015 irritabile" would be found to include many
1016 other species besides that of bards; but that the
1017 irritability of trade would soon reduce the re-
1018 sentments of poets into mere shadow-fights
1019 skiomachias in the comparison. Or is wealth the
1020 only rational object of human interest? Or even
1021 if this were admitted, has the poet no property
1022 in his works? Or is it a rare, or culpable
1023 case, that he who serves at the altar of the
1024 muses, should be compelled to derive his main-
1025 tenance from the altar, when too he has per-
1026 haps deliberately abandoned the fairest pros-
1027 pects of rank and opulence in order to devote

{{Page 44}}

1028 himself, an entire and undistracted man, to the
1029 instruction or refinement of his fellow-citizens?
1030 Or should we pass by all higher objects and
1031 motives, all disinterested benevolence, and even
1032 that ambition of lasting praise which is at once
1033 the crutch and ornament, which at once sup-
1034 ports and betrays, the infirmity of human vir-
1035 tue; is the character and property of the in-
1036 dividual, who labours for our intellectual plea-
1037 sures, less entitled to a share of our fellow
1038 feeling, than that of the wine-merchant or mil-
1039 liner? Sensibility indeed, both quick and deep,
1040 is not only a characteristic feature, but may be
1041 deemed a component part, of genius. But it is
1042 no less an essential mark of true genius, that
1043 its sensibility is excited by any other cause
1044 more powerfully, than by its own personal
1045 interests; for this plain reason, that the man
1046 of genius lives most in the ideal world, in which
1047 the present is still constituted by the future
1048 or the past; and because his feelings have been
1049 habitually associated with thoughts and images,
1050 to the number, clearness, and vivacity of which
1051 the sensation of self is always in an inverse
1052 proportion. And yet, should he perchance
1053 have occasion to repel some false charge, or to
1054 rectify some erroneous censure, nothing is more
1055 common, than for the many to mistake the
1056 general liveliness of his manner and language
1057 whatever is the subject, for the effects of [[pecu-]]

{{Page 45}}

1058 ||pecu||liar irritation from its accidental relation to
1059 himself.*

¶22
1060 For myself, if from my own feelings, or from
1061 the less suspicious test of the observations of
1062 others, I had been made aware of any literary
1063 testiness or jealousy; I trust, that I should
1064 have been, however, neither silly or arrogant
1065 enough, to have burthened the imperfection on
1066 GENIUS. But an experience (and I should not
1067 need documents in abundance to prove my
1068 words, if I added) a tried experience of twenty
1069 years, has taught me, that the original sin of
1070 my character consists in a careless indifference
1071 to public opinion, and to the attacks of those
1072 who influence it; that praise and admiration

* This is one instance among many of deception, by the
telling the half of a fact, and omitting, the other half, when
it is from their mutual counteraction and neutralization,
that the whole truth arises, as a tertiam aliquid different
from either. Thus in Dryden's famous line "Great wit"
(which here means genius) "to madness sure is near allied."
Now as far as the profound sensibility, which is doubtless
one of the components of genius, were alone considered,
single and unbalanced, it might be fairly described as expos-
ing the individual to a greater chance of mental derange-
ment; but then a more than usual rapidity of association, a
more than usual power of passing from thought to thought,
and image to image, is a component equally essential; and
in the due modification of each by the other the GENIUS
itself consists; so that it would be as just as fair to describe
the earth, as in imminent danger of exorbitating, or of falling
into the sun according as the assertor of the absurdity con-
fined his attention either to the projectile or to the attractive
force exclusively.

{{Page 46}}

1073 have become yearly,less and less desirable,
1074 except as marks of sympathy; nay that it is
1075 difficult and distressing to me, to think with
1076 any interest even about the sale and profit of
1077 my works, important, as in my present circum-
1078 stances, such considerations must needs be.
1079 Yet it never occurred to me to believe or fancy,
1080 that the quantum of intellectual power be-
1081 stowed on me by nature or education was in
1082 any way connected with this habit of my feel-
1083 ings; or that it needed any other parents or
1084 fosterers, than constitutional indolence, aggra-
1085 vated into languor by ill-health; the accumulat-
1086 ing embarrassments of procrastination; the
1087 mental cowardice, which is the inseparable
1088 companion of procrastination, and which makes
1089 us anxious to think and converse on any thing
1090 rather than on what concerns ourselves; in
1091 fine, all those close vexations, whether charge-
1092 able on my faults or my fortunes which leave
1093 me but little grief to spare for evils compara-
1094 tively, distant and alien.

¶23
1095 Indignation at literary wrongs, I leave to
1096 men born under happier stars. I cannot afford
1097 it. But so far from condemning those who
1098 can, I deem it a writer's duty, and think it
1099 creditable to his heart, to feel and express a
1100 resentment proportioned to the grossness of the
1101 provocation, and the importance of the object.
1102 There is no profession on earth, which requires

{{Page 47}}

1103 an attention so early, so long, or so unintermit-
1104 ting as that of poetry; and indeed as that of lite-
1105 rary composition in general, if it be such, as at
1106 all satisfies the demands both of taste and of
1107 sound logic. How difficult and delicate a task
1108 even the mere mechanism of verse is, may be
1109 conjectured from the failure of those, who have
1110 attempted poetry late in life. Where then a
1111 man has, from his earliest youth, devoted his
1112 whole being to an object, which by the admis-
1113 sion of all civilized nations in all ages is hono-
1114 rable as a pursuit, and glorious as an attain-
1115 ment; what of all that relates to himself and
1116 his family, if only we except his moral cha-
1117 racter, can have fairer claims to his protection,
1118 or more authorise acts of self-defence, than the
1119 elaborate products of his intellect, and intel-
1120 lectual industry? Prudence itself would com-
1121 mand us to show, even if defect or diversion of
1122 natural sensibility had prevented us from feel-
1123 ing, a due interest and qualified anxiety for the
1124 offspring and representatives of our nobler being.
1125 I know it, alas! by woeful experience! I have
1126 laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this
1127 wilderness the world, with ostrich careless-
1128 ness and ostrich oblivion. The greater part
1129 indeed have been trod under foot, and are for-
1130 gotten; but yet no small number have crept
1131 forth into life, some to furnish feathers for the
1132 caps of others, and still more to plume the

{{Page 48}}

1133 shafts in the quivers of my enemies, of them
1134 that unprovoked have lain in wait against my
1135 soul.

1136 " Sic vos, non vobis mellificatis, apes!"
[[no footnote marker]]

[[no footnote marker]]An instance in confirmation of the Note, p. 39, occurs to
me as I am correcting this sheet, with the FAITHFUL
SHEPHERDESS open before me. |Mr.| Seward first traces
Fletcher's lines;

" More soul-diseases than e'er yet the hot
"Sun bred thro' his burnings, while the dog
"Pursues the raging lion, throwing the fog
"And deadly vapor from his angry breath,
"Filling the lower world with plague and death."--

To Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar,

" The rampant lion hunts he fast
"With dogs of noisome breath;
"Whose baleful barking brings, in haste,
"Pyne, plagues, and dreary death!"

He then takes occasion to introduce Homer's simile of the
sight of Achilles' shield to Priam compared with the Dog
Star, literally thus--

" For this indeed is most splendid, but it was made an
"evil sign, and brings many a consuming disease to wretched
"mortals." Nothing can be more simple as a description, or
more accurate as a simile; which (says |Mr.| S.) is thus finely
translated by |Mr.| Pope:

" Terrific Glory! for his burning breath
Taints the red air with fevers, plagues, and death!"

Now here (not to mention the tremendous bombast) the
Dog Star, so called, is turned into a real Dog, a very odd
Dog, a Fire, Fever, Plague, and death-breathing, red-air-
tainting Dog: and the whole visual likeness is lost, while the
likeness in the effects is rendered absurd by the exaggeration.
In Spencer and Fletcher the thought is justifiable; for the
images are at least consistent, and it was the intention of the
writers to mark the seasons by this allegory of visualized
Puns.

{{Page 49}}

1137 CHAPTER III.

1138 The author's obligations to critics, and the proba-
1139 ble occasion--Principles of modern criticism--
1140 |Mr.| Southey's works and character.

¶24
1141 To anonymous critics in reviews, maga-
1142 zines, and news-journals of various name and
1143 rank, and to satirists with or without a name,
1144 in verse or prose, or in verse-text aided by
1145 prose-comment, I do seriously believe and pro-
1146 fess, that I owe full two thirds of whatever
1147 reputation and publicity I happen to possess.
1148 For when the name of an individual has oc-
1149 curred so frequently, in so many works, for
1150 so great a length of time, the readers of these
1151 works (which with a shelf or two of BEAUTIES,
1152 ELEGANT EXTRACTS and ANAS, form nine-tenths
1153 of the reading of the reading public*) cannot but

* For as to the devotees of the circulating libraries, I dare
not compliment their pass-time, or rather killtime, with the
name of reading. Call it rather a sort of beggarly day-
dreaming, during which the mind of the dreamer furnishes
for itself nothing but laziness and a little mawkish sensibi-
lity; while the whole materiel and imagery of the doze is
supplied ab extra by a sort of mental camera obscura ma-
nufactured at the printing office, which pro tempore fixes,
reflects and transmits the moving phantasms of one man's*

{{Page 50>

1154 be familiar with the name, without distinctly
1155 remembering whether it was introduced for
1156 an eulogy or for censure. And this becomes
1157 the more likely, if (as I believe) the habit of
1158 perusing periodical works may be properly
1159 added to Averrhoe's* catalogue of ANTI-MNE-
1160 MONICS, or weakeners of the memory. But
1161 where this has not been the case, yet the reader

*delirium, so as to people the barrenness of an hundred other
brains afflicted with the same trance or suspension of all
common sense and all definite purpose. We should there-
fore transfer this species of amusement, (if indeed those can
be said to retire a musis, who were never in their company,
or relaxation be attributable to those, whose bows are never
bent) from the genus, reading, to that comprehensive class
characterized by the power of reconciling the two contrary
yet co-existing propensities of human nature, namely; indul-
gence of sloth, and hatred of vacancy. In addition to novels
and tales of chivalry in prose or rhyme, (by which last I
mean neither rhythm nor metre) this genus comprizes as its
species, gaming, swinging, or swaying on a chair or gate;
spitting over a bridge; smoking; snuff-taking; tete a tete
quarrels after dinner between husband and wife; conning
word by word all the advertisements of the daily advertizer
in a public house on a rainy day, |&c.| |&c.| |&c.|

*Ex. gr. Pediculos e capillis excerptos in arenam jacere
incontusos; eating of unripe fruit; gazing on the clouds, and
(in genere) on moveable things suspended in the air; riding
among a multitude of camels; frequent laughter; listening
to a series of jests and humourous anecdotes, as when (so to
modernise the learned Saracen's meaning) one man's droll
story of an Irishman inevitably occasions another's droll story
of a Scotchman, which again by the same sort of conjunction
disjunctive leads to some etourderie of a Welchman, and
that again to some sly hit of a Yorkshireman; the habit of
reading tomb-stones in church-yards, |&c.| By the bye, this
catalogue strange as it may appear, is not insusceptible of a
sound pcychological commentary.

{{Page 51}}

1162 will be apt to suspect, that there must be
1163 something more than usually strong and exten-
1164 sive in a reputation, that could either require or
1165 stand so merciless and long-continued a can-
1166 nonading. Without any feeling of anger there-
1167 fore (for which indeed, on my own account, I
1168 have no pretext) I may yet be allowed to ex-
1169 press some degree of surprize, that after having
1170 run the critical gauntlet for a certain class of
1171 faults which I had, nothing having come before
1172 the judgement-seat in the interim, I should,
1173 year after year, quarter after quarter, month
1174 after month (not to mention sundry petty pe-
1175 riodicals of still quicker revolution, "or weekly
1176 or diurnal") have been for at least 17 years
1177 consecutively dragged forth by them into the
1178 foremost ranks of the proscribed, and forced to
1179 abide the brunt of abuse, for faults directly
1180 opposite, and which I certainly had not. How
1181 shall I explain this?

¶25
1182 Whatever may have been the case with others,
1183 I certainly cannot attribute this persecution to
1184 personal dislike, or to envy, or to feelings of
1185 vindictive animosity. Not to the former, for,
1186 with the exception of a very few who are my
1187 intimate friends, and were so before thencty were
1188 known as authors, I have had little other ac-
1189 quaintance with literary characters, than what
1190 may be implied in an accidental introduction,
1191 or casual meeting in a mixt company. And,

{{Page 52}}

1192 as far as words and looks can be trusted, I
1193 must believe that, even in these instances, I had
1194 excited no unfriendly disposition.* Neither by

* Some years ago, a gentleman, the chief writer and con-
ductor of a celebrated review, distinguished by its hostility
to |Mr.| Southey, spent a day or two at Keswick. That he
was, without diminution on this account, treated with every
hospitable attention by |Mr.| Southey and myself, I trust I
need not say. But one thing I may venture to notice; that
at no period of my life do I remember to have received so
many, and such high coloured compliments in so short a space
of time. He was likewise circumstantially informed by what
series of accidents it had happened, that |Mr.| Wordsworth,
|Mr.| Southey, and I had become neighbours; and how ut-
terly unfounded was the supposition, that we considered
ourselves, as belonging to any common school, but that of
good sense confirmed by the long-established models of the
best times of Greece, Rome, Italy, and England; and still
more groundless the notion, that |Mr.| Southey (for as to my-
self I have published so little, and that little, of so little im-
portance, as to make it almost ludicrous to mention my name
at all) could have been concerned in the formation of a poetic
sect with |Mr.| Wordsworth, when so many of his works had
been published not only previously to any acquaintance be-
tween them; but before |Mr.| Wordsworth himself had written
any thing but in a diction ornate, and uniformly sustain-
ed; when too the slightest examination will make it evident, that
between those and the after writings of |Mr.| Southey, there
exists no other difference than that of a progressive degree
of excellence from progressive developement of power, and
progressive facility from habit and increase of experience.
Yet among the first articles which this man wrote after his
return from Keswick, we were characterized as "the School
of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes."
In reply to a letter from the same gentleman, in which he
had asked me, whether I was in earnest in preferring the
style of Hooker to that of |Dr.| Johnson; and Jeremy Taylor
to Burke; I stated, somewhat at large, the comparative ex-
cellences and defects which characterized our best prose
writers, from the reformation, to the first half of Charles
2nd; and that of those who had flourished during the present
reign, and the preceding one. About twelve months [[after-]]*

{{Page 53}}

1195 letter, or in conversation, have I ever had dis-
1196 pute or controversy beyond the common social
1197 interchange of opinions. Nay, where I had
1198 reason to suppose my convictions fundament-
1199 ally different, it has been my habit, and I may
1200 add, the impulse of my nature, to assign the
1201 grounds of my belief, rather than the belief
1202 itself; and not to express dissent, till I could

*||after||wards, a review appeared on the same subject, in the con-
cluding paragraph of which the reviewer asserts, that his
chief motive for entering into the discussion was to separate
a rational and qualified admiration of our elder writers, from
the indiscriminate enthusiasm of a recent school, who praised
what they did not understand, and caracatured what they
were unable to imitate, And, that no doubt might be left
concerning the persons alluded to, the writer annexes the
names of Miss BAILIE, W. SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH and
COLERIDGE. For that which follows, I have only ear-say
evidence; but yet such as demands my belief; viz. that on
being questioned concerning this apparently wanton attack,
more especially with reference to Miss Bailie, the writer had
stated as his motives, that this lady when at Edinburgh had
declined a proposal of introducing him to her; that |Mr.|
Southey had written against him; and |Mr.| Wordsworth had
talked contemptuously of him; but that as to Coleridge he
had noticed him merely because the names of Southey and
Wordsworth and Coleridge always went together. But if
it were worth while to mix together, as ingredients, half the
anecdotes which I either myself know to be true, or which
I have received from men incapable of intentional falsehood,
concerning the characters, qualifications, and motives of our
anonymous critics, whose decisions are oracles for our read-
ing public; I might safely borrow the words of the apocry-
phal Daniel; "Give me leave, O SOVEREIGN PUBLIC, and I
shall slay this dragon without sword or staff." For the com-
pound would be as the "Pitch, and fat, and hair, which
Daniel took, and did seethe them together, and made lumps
thereof, and put into the dragon's mouth, and so the dragon
burst in sunder; and Daniel said LO; THESE ARE THE
GODS YE WORSHIP."

{{Page 54}}

1203 establish some points of complete sympathy,
1204 some grounds common to both sides, from
1205 which to commence its explanation.

¶26
1206 Still less can I place these attacks to the
1207 charge of envy. The few pages, which I have
1208 published, are of too distant a date; and the
1209 extent of their sale a proof too conclusive
1210 against their having been popular at any time;
1211 to render probable, I had almost said possible,
1212 the excitement of envy on their account; and
1213 the man who should envy me on any other,
1214 verily he must be envy-mad!

¶27
1215 Lastly, with as little semblance of reason,
1216 could I suspect any animosity towards me from
1217 vindictive feelings as the cause. I have before
1218 said, that my acquaintance with literary men
1219 has been limited and distant; and that I have
1220 had neither dispute nor controversy. From
1221 my first entrance into life, I have, with few and
1222 short intervals, lived either abroad or in retire-
1223 ment. My different essays on subjects of na-
1224 tional interest, published at different times, first
1225 in the Morning Post and then in the Courier,
1226 with my courses of lectures on the principles of
1227 criticism as applied to Shakspeare and Milton,
1228 constitute my whole publicity; the only occa-
1229 sions on which I could offend any member of
1230 the republic of letters. With one solitary ex-
1231 ception in which my words were first mis-
1232 stated and then wantonly applied to an [[indivi-]]

{{Page 55}}

1233 ||indivi||dual, I could never learn, that I had excited the
1234 displeasure of any among my literary contem-
1235 poraries. Having announced my intention to
1236 give a course of lectures on the characteristic
1237 merits and defects of English poetry in its dif-
1238 ferent æras; first, from Chaucer to Milton;
1239 second, from Dryden inclusive to Thompson;
1240 and third, from Cowper to the present day; I
1241 changed my plan, and confined my disquisition
1242 to the two former æras, that I might furnish no
1243 possible pretext for the unthinking to miscon-
1244 strue, or the malignant to misapply my words,
1245 and having stampt their own meaning on them,
1246 to pass them as current coin in the marts of
1247 garrulity or detraction.

¶28
1248 Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent
1249 minds as robberies of the deserving; and it is
1250 too true, and too frequent, that Bacon, Har-
1251 rington, Machiavel, and Spinosa, are not read,
1252 because Hume, Condilliac, and Voltaire are.
1253 But in promiscuous company no prudent man
1254 will oppugn the merits of a contemporary in
1255 his own supposed department; contenting him-
1256 self with praising in his turn those whom he
1257 deems excellent. If I should ever deem it my
1258 duty at all to oppose the pretensions of indivi-
1259 duals, I would oppose them in books which
1260 could be weighed and answered, in which I
1261 could evolve the whole of my reasons and feel-
1262 ings, with their requisite limits and [[modifica-]]

{{Page 56}}

1263 ||modifica||tions; not in irrecoverable conversation, where
1264 however strong the reasons might be, the feel-
1265 ings that prompted them would assuredly be
1266 attributed by some one or other to envy and
1267 discontent. Besides I well know, and I trust,
1268 have acted on that knowledge, that it must be
1269 the ignorant and injudicious who extol the
1270 unworthy; and the eulogies of critics without
1271 taste or judgement are the natural reward of
1272 authors without feeling or genius. "Sint uni-
1273 cuique sua premia."

¶29
1274 How then, dismissing, as I do, these three
1275 causes, am I to account for attacks, the long
1276 continuance and inveteracy of which it would
1277 require all three to explain. The solution may
1278 seem to have been given, or at least suggested,
1279 in a note to a preceding page. I was in habits
1280 of intimacy with |Mr.| Wordsworth and |Mr.|
1281 Southey! This, however, transfers, rather than
1282 removes, the difficulty. Be it, that by an un-
1283 conscionable extension of the old adage, "nos-
1284 citur a socio" my literary friends are never
1285 under the water-fall of criticism, but I must be
1286 wet through with the spray; yet how came the
1287 torrent to descend upon them ?

¶30
1288 First then, with regard to |Mr.| Southey. I
1289 well remember the general reception of his
1290 earlier publications: viz. the poems published
1291 with |Mr.| Lovell under the names of Moschus
1292 and Bion; the two volumes of poems under his

{{Page 57}}

1293 own name, and the Joan of Arc. The censures
1294 of the critics by profession are extant, and may
1295 be easily referred to:--careless lines, inequality
1296 in the merit of the different poems, and (in the
1297 lighter works) a prediliction for the strange and
1298 whimsical; in short, such faults as might have
1299 been anticipated in a young and rapid writer,
1300 were indeed sufficiently enforced. Nor was
1301 there at that time wanting a party spirit to
1302 aggravate the defects of a poet, who with all
1303 the courage of uncorrupted youth had avowed
1304 his zeal for a cause, which he deemed that of
1305 liberty, and his abhorrence of oppression by
1306 whatever name consecrated. But it was as
1307 little objected by others, as dreamt of by the
1308 poet himself, that he preferred careless and
1309 prosaic lines on rule and of forethought, or in-
1310 deed that he pretended to any other art or
1311 theory of poetic diction, besides that which we
1312 may all learn from Horace, Quintilian, the ad-
1313 mirable dialogue de Causis Corruptæ Eloquen-
1314 tiæ, or Strada's Prolusions; if indeed natural
1315 good sense and the early study of the best
1316 models in his own language had not infused
1317 the same maxims more securely, and, if I may
1318 venture the expression, more vitally. All that
1319 could have been fairly deduced was, that in his
1320 taste and estimation of writers |Mr.| Southey
1321 agreed far more with Warton, thall with John-
1322 son. Nor do I mean to deny, that at all times

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1323 |Mr.| Southey was of the same mind with Sir
1324 Philip Sidney in preferring an excellent ballad
1325 in the humblest style of poetry to twenty in-
1326 different poems that strutted in the highest.
1327 And by what have his works, published since
1328 then, been characterized, each more strikingly
1329 than the preceding, but by greater splendor, a
1330 deeper pathos, profounder reflections, and a
1331 more sustained dignity of language and of
1332 metre? Distant may the period be, but when-
1333 ever the time shall come, when all his works
1334 shall be collected by some editor worthy to be
1335 his biographer, I trust that an excerpta of all
1336 the passages, in which his writings, name, and
1337 character have been attacked, from the pamph-
1338 lets and periodical works of the last twenty
1339 years, may be an accompaniment. Yet that it
1340 would prove medicinal in after times, I dare
1341 not hope; for as long as there are readers to
1342 be delighted with calumny, there will be found
1343 reviewers to calumniate. And such readers
1344 will become in all probability more numerous,
1345 in proportion as a still greater diffusion of lite-
1346 rature shall produce an increase of sciolists;
1347 and sciolism bring with it petulance and pre-
1348 sumption. In times of old, books were as reli-
1349 gious oracles; as literature advanced, they next
1350 became venerable preceptors; they then de-
1351 scended to the rank of instructive friends; and
1352 as their numbers increased, they sunk still

{{Page 59}}

1353 lower to that of entertaining companions; and
1354 at present they seem degraded into culprits to
1355 hold up their hands at the bar of every self-
1356 elected, yet not the less peremptory, judge,
1357 who chuses to write from humour or interest,
1358 from enmity or arrogance, and to abide the
1359 decision (in the words of Jeremy Taylor) "of
1360 him that reads in malice, or him that reads after
1361 dinner."

¶31
1362 The same gradual retrograde movement may
1363 be traced, in the relation which the authors
1364 themselves have assumed towards their readers.
1365 From the lofty address of Bacon: "these are
1366 "the meditations of Francis of Verulam, which
1367 "that posterity should be possessed of, he deemed
1368 "their interest :" or from dedication to Monarch
1369 or Pontiff, in which the honor given was as-
1370 serted in equipoise to the patronage acknow-
1371 leged from PINDAR'S

1372 --ep alloi-
1373 -si dalloi megaloi. to deschaton koru-
1374 -phoutai basileusi. m{ee}keti
1375 Paptaine porsion.
1376 Ei{ee} se te touton
1377 Upsou chronon patein, eme
1378 Te tossade nikarorois
1379 Omilein, prophanton sorian kad El-
1380 -lanas eonta panta.

1381 OLYMP. OD. I.

{{Page 60}}

¶32
1382 Poets and Philosophers, rendered diffident
1383 by their very number, addressed themselves to
1384 "learned readers ;" then, aimed to conciliate
1385 the graces of "the candid reader ;" till, the critic
1386 still rising as the author sunk, the amateurs of
1387 literature collectively were erected into a muni-
1388 cipality of judges, and addressed as THE TOWN!
1389 And now finally, all men being supposed able
1390 to read, and all readers able to judge, the mul-
1391 titudinous PUBLIC, shaped into personal unity
1392 by the magic of abstraction, sits nominal des-
1393 pot on the throne of criticism. But, alas! as
1394 in other despotisms, it but echoes the decisions
1395 of its invisible ministers, whose intellectual
1396 claims to the guardianship of the muses seem,
1397 for the greater part, analogous to the phy-
1398 sical qualifications which adapt their oriental
1399 brethren for the superintendance of the Harem.
1400 Thus it is said, that |St.| Nepomuc was installed
1401 the guardian of bridges because he had fallen
1402 over one, and sunk out of sight; thus too |St.|
1403 Cecilia is said to have been first propitiated by
1404 musicians, because having failed in her own
1405 attempts, she had taken a dislike to the art,
1406 and all its successful professors. But I shall
1407 probably have occasion hereafter to deliver my
1408 convictions more at large concerning this state
1409 of things, and its influences on taste, genius
1410 and morality.

{{Page 61}}

¶33
1411 In the "Thalaba" the "Madoc" and still
1412 more evidently in the unique* "Cid," the
1413 "Kehama," and as last, so best, the "Don
1414 "Roderick;" Southey has given abundant proof,
1415 "se cogitässe quám sit magnum dare aliquid
1416 "in manus hominum: nec persuadere sibi posse,
1417 "non sæpe tractandum quod placere et semper
1418 "et omnibus cupiat." Plin. Ep. Lib. 7. Ep. 17.
1419 But on the other hand I guess, that |Mr.| Southey
1420 was quite unable to comprehend, wherein could
1421 consist the crime or mischief of printing half a
1422 dozen or more playful poems; or to speak
1423 more generally, compositions which would be
1424 enjoyed or passed over, according as the taste
1425 and humour of the reader might chance to be;
1426 provided they contained nothing immoral. In
1427 the present age "perituræ parcere chartæ" is
1428 emphatically an unreasonable demand. The
1429 merest trifle, he ever sent abroad, had tenfold
1430 better claims to its ink and paper, than all the
1431 silly criticisms, which prove no more, than that

* I have ventured to call it "unique ;" not only because I
know no work of the kind in our language (if we except a
few chapters of the old translation of Froissart) none, which
uniting the charms of romance and history, keeps the imagi-
nation so constantly on the wing, and yet leaves so much for
after reflection; but likewise, and chiefly, because it is a
compilation, which in the various excellencies of translation,
selection, and arrangement, required and proves greater ge-
nius in the compiler, as living in the present state of society,
than in the original composers.

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1432 the critic was not one of those, for whom the
1433 trifle was written; and than all the grave ex-
1434 hortations to a greater reverence for the public.
1435 As if the passive page of a book, by having an
1436 epigram or doggrel tale impressed on it, in-
1437 stantly assumed at once loco-motive power and
1438 a sort of ubiquity, so as to flutter and buz in
1439 the ear of the public to the sore annoyance of
1440 the said mysterious personage. But what gives
1441 an additional and more ludicrous absurdity to
1442 these lamentations is the curious fact, that if in
1443 a volume of poetry the critic should find poem
1444 or passage which he deems more especially
1445 worthless, he is sure to select and reprint it in
1446 the review; by which, on his own grounds, he
1447 wastes as much more paper than the author, as
1448 the copies of a fashionable review are more
1449 numerous than those of the original book; in
1450 some, and those the most prominent instances,
1451 as ten thousand to five hundred. I know
1452 nothing that surpasses the vileness of deciding
1453 on the merits of a poet or painter (not by cha-
1454 racteristic defects; for where there is genius,
1455 these always point to his characteristic beauties;
1456 but) by accidental failures or faulty passages;
1457 except the impudence of defending it, as the
1458 proper duty, and most instructive part, of cri-
1459 ticism. Omit or pass slightly over, the ex-
1460 pression, grace, and grouping of Raphael's
1461 figures; but ridicule in detail the [[knitting-]]

{{Page 63}}

1462 ||knitting-||needles and broom-twigs, that are to represent
1463 trees in his back grounds; and never let him
1464 hear the last of his galli-pots! Admit, that
1465 the Allegro and Penseroso of Milton are not
1466 without merit; but repay yourself for this con-
1467 cession, by reprinting at length the two poems
1468 on the University Carrier! As a fair specimen
1469 of his sonnets, quote " a Book was writ of late
1470 called Tetrachordon ;" and as characteristic of
1471 his rhythm and metre cite his literal translation
1472 of the first and second psalm! In order to
1473 justify yourself, you need only assert, that had
1474 you dwelt chiefly on the beauties and excel-
1475 lencies of the poet, the admiration of these
1476 might seduce the attention of future writers
1477 from the objects of their love and wonder, to
1478 an imitation of the few poems and passages in
1479 which the poet was most unlike himself.

¶34
1480 But till reviews are conducted on far other
1481 principles, and with far other motives; till in
1482 the place of arbitrary dictation and petulant
1483 sneers, the reviewers support their decisions by
1484 reference to fixed canons of criticism, previ-
1485 ously established and deduced from the nature
1486 of man; reflecting minds will pronounce it ar-
1487 rogance in them thus to announce themselves
1488 to men of letters, as the guides of their taste
1489 and judgment. To the purchaser and mere
1490 reader it is, at all events, an injustice. He
1491 who tells me that there are defects in a new

{{Page 64}}

1492 work, tells me nothing which I should not
1493 have taken for granted without his information.
1494 But he, who points out and elucidates the
1495 beauties of an original work, does indeed give
1496 me interesting information, such as experience
1497 would not have authorised me in anticipating.
1498 And as to compositions which the authors
1499 themselves announce with "Hæc ipsi novimus
1500 esse nihil," why should we judge by a dif-
1501 ferent rule two printed works, only because
1502 the one author was alive, and the other in his
1503 grave? What literary man has not regretted
1504 the prudery of Spratt in refusing to let his friend
1505 Cowley appear in his slippers and dressing
1506 gown? I am not perhaps the only one who
1507 has derived an innocent amusement from the
1508 riddles, conundrums, tri-syllable lines, |&c.| |&c.|
1509 of Swift and his correspondents, in hours of
1510 languor when to have read his more finished
1511 works would have been useless to myself, and,
1512 in some sort, an act of injustice to the author.
1513 But I am at a loss to conceive by what perver-
1514 sity of judgement, these relaxations of his genius
1515 could be employed to diminish his fame as the
1516 writer of "Gulliver's travels," and the "Tale
1517 of a Tub." Had |Mr.| Southey written twice as
1518 many poems of inferior merit, or partial inte-
1519 rest, as have enlivened the journals of the day,
1520 they would have added to his honour with
1521 good and wise men, not merely or principally

{{Page 65}}

1522 as proving the versatility of his talents, but as
1523 evidences of the purity of that mind, which even
1524 in its levities never wrote a line, which it need
1525 regret on any moral account.

¶35
1526 I have in imagination transferred to the future
1527 biographer the duty of contrasting Southey's
1528 fixed and well-earned fame, with the abuse and
1529 indefatigable hostility of his anonymous critics
1530 from his early youth to his ripest manhood.
1531 But I cannot think so ill of human nature as not
1532 to believe, that these critics have already taken
1533 shame to themselves, whether they consider the
1534 object of their abuse in his moral or his literary
1535 character. For reflect but on the variety and
1536 extent of his acquirements! He stands second
1537 to no man, either as an historian or as a biblio-
1538 grapher; and when I regard him, as a popular
1539 essayist, (for the articles of his compositions in
1540 the reviews are for the greater part essays on
1541 subjects of deep or curious interest rather than
1542 criticisms on particular works*) I look in
1543 vain for any writer, who has conveyed so much
1544 information, from so many and such recondite
1545 sources, with so many just and original reflec-
1546 tions, in a style so lively and poignant, yet so
1547 uniformly classical and perspicuous; no one in
1548 short who has combined so much wisdom with

* See the articles on Methodism, in the Quarterly Review;
the small volume on the New System of Education, |&c.|

{{Page 66}}

1549 so much wit; so much truth and knowledge
1550 with so much life and fancy. His prose is
1551 always intelligible and always entertaining. In
1552 poetry he has attempted almost every species
1553 of composition known before, and he has added
1554 new ones; and if we except the highest lyric,
1555 (in which how few, how very few even of the
1556 greatest minds have been fortunate) he has
1557 attempted every species successfully: from
1558 the political song of the day, thrown off in
1559 the playful overflow of honest joy and pa-
1560 triotic exultation, to the wild ballad ;* from
1561 epistolary ease and graceful narrative, to the
1562 austere and impetuous moral declamation; from
1563 the pastoral claims and wild streaming lights of
1564 the "Thalaba," in which sentiment and imagery
1565 have given permanence even to the excitement
1566 of curiosity; and from the full blaze of the
1567 "Kehama," (a gallery of finished pictures in
1568 one splendid fancy piece, in which, notwith-
1569 standing, the moral grandeur rises gradually
1570 above the brilliance of the colouring and the
1571 boldness and novelty of the machinery) to the
1572 more sober beauties of the "Madoc;" and
1573 lastly, from the Madoc to his "Roderic," in
1574 which, retaining all his former excellencies of a
1575 poet eminently inventive and picturesque, he has

* See the incomparable "Return to Moscow," and the
"Old Woman of Berkeley."

{{Page 67}}

1576 surpassed himself in language and metre, in
1577 the construction of the whole, and in the splen-
1578 dor of particular passages.

¶36
1579 Here then shall I conclude? No! The cha-
1580 racters of the deceased, like the encomia on
1581 tombstones, as they are described with religious
1582 tenderness, so are they read, with allowing sym-
1583 pathy indeed, but yet with rational deduction.
1584 There are men, who deserve a higher record;
1585 men with whose characters it is the interest of
1586 their contemporaries, no less than that of poste-
1587 rity, to be made acquainted; while it is yet pos-
1588 sible for impartial censure, and even for quick-
1589 sighted envy, to cross-examine the tale without
1590 offence to the courtesies of humanity; and while
1591 the eulogist detected in exaggeration or false-
1592 hood must pay the full penalty of his baseness
1593 in the contempt which brands the convicted flat-
1594 terer. Publicly has |Mr.| Southey been reviled
1595 by men, who (I would feign hope for the honor
1596 of human nature) hurled fire-brands against a
1597 figure of their own imagination, publicly have
1598 his talents been depreciated, his principles de-
1599 nounced; as publicly do I therefore, who have
1600 known him intimately, deem it my duty to leave
1601 recorded, that it is SOUTHEY'S almost unexam-
1602 pled felicity, to possess the best gifts of talent and
1603 genius free from all their characteristic defects.
1604 To those who remember the state of our public
1605 schools and universities some twenty years past,

{{Page 68}}

1606 it will appear no ordinary praise in any man to
1607 have passed from innocence into virtue, not only
1608 free from all vicious habit, but unstained by
1609 one act of intemperance, or the degradations
1610 akin to intemperance. That scheme of head,
1611 heart, and habitual demeanour, which in his
1612 early manhood, and first controversial writings,
1613 Milton, claiming the privilege of self-defence,
1614 asserts of himself, and challenges his calumnia-
1615 tors to disprove; this will his school-mates, his
1616 fellow-collegians, and his maturer friends, with
1617 a confidence proportioned to the intimacy of their
1618 knowledge, bear witness to, as again realized
1619 in the life of Robert Southey. But still more
1620 striking to those, who by biography or by their
1621 own experience are familiar with the general
1622 habits of genius, will appear the poet's match-
1623 less industry and perseverance in his pursuits;
1624 the worthiness and dignity of those pursuits;
1625 his generous submission to tasks of transitory
1626 interest, or such as his genius alone could make
1627 otherwise; and that having thus more than sa-
1628 tisfied the claims of affection or prudence, he
1629 should yet have made for himself time and
1630 power, to achieve more, and in more various de-
1631 partments than almost any other writer has done,
1632 though employed wholly on subjects of his own
1633 choice and ambition. But as Southey possesses,
1634 and is not possessed by, his genius, even so is
1635 he the master even of his virtues. The regular

{{Page 69}}

1636 and methodical tenor of his daily labours, which
1637 would be deemed rare in the most mechanical
1638 pursuits, and might be envied by the mere man
1639 of business, loses all semblance of formality in
1640 the dignified simplicity of his manners, in the
1641 spring and healthful chearfulness of his spirits.
1642 Always employed, his friends find him always
1643 at leisure. No less punctual in trifles, than
1644 stedfast in the performance of highest duties, he
1645 inflicts none of those small pains and discom-
1646 forts which irregular men scatter about them
1647 and which in the aggregate so often become
1648 formidable obstacles both to happiness and
1649 utility; while on the contrary he bestows all the
1650 pleasures, and inspires all that ease of mind on
1651 those around him or connected with him, which
1652 perfect consistency, and (if such a word might
1653 be framed) absolute reliability, equally in small
1654 as in great concerns, cannot but inspire and
1655 bestow: when this too is softened without
1656 being weakened by kindness and gentleness.
1657 I know few men who so well deserve the cha-
1658 racter which an antient attributes to Marcus
1659 Cato, namely, that he was likest virtue, in as
1660 much as he seemed to act aright, not in obedi-
1661 ence to any law or outward motive, but by the
1662 necessity of a happy nature, which could not
1663 act otherwise. As son, brother, husband, father,
1664 master, friend, he moves with firm yet light
1665 steps, alike unostentatious, and alike exem.

{{Page 70}}

1666 plary. As a writer, he has uniformly made his
1667 talents subservient to the best interests of huma-
1668 nity, of public virtue, and domestic piety; his
1669 cause has ever been the cause of pure religion
1670 and of liberty, of national independence and of
1671 national illumination. When future critics shall
1672 weigh out his guerdon of praise and censure, it
1673 will be Southey the poet only, that will supply
1674 them with the scanty materials for the latter.
1675 They will likewise not fail to record, that as no
1676 man was ever a more constant friend, never had
1677 poet more friends and honorers among the good
1678 of all parties; and that quacks in education,
1679 quacks in politics, and quacks in criticism were
1680 his only enemies.*

* It is not easy to estimate the effects which the example
of a young man as highly distinguished for strict purity of
disposition and conduct, as for intellectual power and lite-
rary acquirements, may produce on those of the same age
with himself, especially on those of similar pursuits and con-
genial minds. For many years, my opportunities of inter-
course with |Mr.| Southey have been rare, and at long inter-
vals; but I dwell with unabated pleasure on the strong and
sudden, yet I trust not fleeting influence, which my moral
being underwent on my acquaintance with him at Oxford,
whither I had gone at the commencement of our Cambridge
vacation on a visit to an old school-fellow. Not indeed on
my moral or religious principles, for they had never been
contaminated; but in awakening the sense of the duty and
dignity of making my actions accord with those principles,
both in word and deed. The irregularities only not univer-
sal among the young men of my standing, which I always
knew to be wrong, I then learnt to feel as degrading; learnt
to know that an opposite conduct, which was at that time
considered by us as the easy virtue of cold and selfish pru-
dence, might originate in the noblest emotions, in views the*

{{Page 71}}

1681 CHAPTER IV.

1682 The lyrical ballads with the preface--|Mr.| Words-
1683 worth's earlier poems--On fancy and imagi-
1684 nation--The investigation of the distinction
1685 important to the fine arts.

¶37
1686 I have wandered far from the object in view,
1687 but as I fancied to myself readers who would
1688 respect the feelings that had tempted me from

*most disinterested and imaginative. It is not however from
grateful recollections only, that I have been impelled thus to
leave these, my deliberate sentiments on record; but in some
sense as a debt of justice to the man, whose name has been so
often connected with mine, for evil to which he is a stranger.
As a specimen I subjoin part of a note, from "the Beauties
of the Anti-jacobin," in which, having previously informed
the public that I had been dishonor'd at Cambridge for
preaching deism, at a time when for my youthful ardor in
defence of christianity, I was decried as a bigot by the pro-
selytes of French Phi- (or to speak more truly, Psi) losophy,
the writer concludes with these words "since this time he
has left his native country, commenced citizen of the world,
left his poor children fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex
his disce, his friends, LAMB and SOUTHEY. "With severest
truth it may be asserted, that it would not be easy to select
two men more exemplary in their domestic affections, than
those whose names were thus printed at full length as in the
same rank of morals with a denounced infidel and fugitive,
who had left his children fatherless and his wife destitute!
Is it surprising, that many good men remained longer than
perhaps they otherwise would have done, adverse to a party,
which encouraged and openly rewarded the authors of such
atrocious calumnies! Qualis es, nescio; sed per quales
agis, scio et doleo.

{{Page 72}}

1689 the main road; so I dare calculate on not a
1690 few, who will warmly sympathize with them.
1691 At present it will be sufficient for my purpose,
1692 if I have proved, that |Mr.| Southey's writings
1693 no more than my own, furnished the original
1694 occasion to this fiction of a new school of poetry,
1695 and of clamors against its supposed founders
1696 and proselytes.

¶38
1697 As little do I believe that "|Mr.| WORDS-
1698 WORTH'S Lyrical Ballads" were in themselves the
1699 cause. I speak exclusively of the two volumes
1700 so entitled. A careful and repeated examina-
1701 tion of these confirms me in the belief, that the
1702 omission of less than an hundred lines would
1703 have precluded nine-tenths of the criticism on
1704 this work. I hazard this declaration, however,
1705 on the supposition, that the reader had taken it
1706 up, as he would have done any other collection
1707 of poems purporting to derive their subjects or
1708 interests from the incidents of domestic or or-
1709 dinary life, intermingled with higher strains of
1710 meditation which the poet utters in his own
1711 person and character; with the proviso, that
1712 they were perused without knowledge of, or
1713 reference to, the author's peculiar opinions, and
1714 that the reader had not had his attention previ-
1715 ously directed to those peculiarities. In these,
1716 as was actually the case with |Mr.| Southey's
1717 earlier works, the lines and passages which
1718 might have offended the general taste, would

{{Page 73}}

1719 have been considered as mere inequalities, and
1720 attributed to inattention, not to perversity of
1721 judgement. The men of business who had
1722 passed their lives chiefly in cities, and who
1723 might therefore be expected to derive the high-
1724 est pleasure from acute notices of men and
1725 manners conveyed in easy, yet correct and
1726 pointed language; and all those who, reading
1727 but little poetry, are most stimulated with that
1728 species of it, which seems most distant from
1729 prose, would probably have passed by the
1730 volume altogether. Others more catholic in
1731 their taste, and yet habituated to be most pleas-
1732 ed when most excited, would have contented
1733 themselves with deciding, that the author had
1734 been successful in proportion to the elevation
1735 of his style and subject. Not a few perhaps,
1736 might by their admiration of "the lines written
1737 near Tintern Abbey," those "left upon a Seat
1738 under a Yew Tree," the "old Cumberland beg-
1739 gar," and "Ruth," have been gradually led to
1740 peruse with kindred feeling the "Brothers," the
1741 "Hart leap well," and whatever other poems in
1742 that collection may be described as